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PROPEBTY OF THE 

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RURAL IMPROVEMENT 



BY 

B. G, NORTHROP, 

Secretary of Connecticut Board op Education. 



NEW HAVEN: 

TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR 

18 80. 



RURAL IMPROVEMENT 



BY 

B. a! NORTHROP, 

Secretary of Connecticut Board op Education. 



NEW HAVEH: 

TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR 
1880. 



.c 



Public interest in home and rural adornment is rapidly increasing. A little 
foresight will show that no rural community can afford to continue without some 
organized efforts for this purpose, such as have done great good in promoting 
public health, cultivating public spirit, quickening social and intellectual life, build- 
ing up and beautifying towns, and thus enhancing the value of real estate. I shall 
be happy to cooperate with public-spirited citizens who are moving in this matter, 
and will lecture on this subject, without charge either for services or expenses, in 
any town in Connecticut. In this reprint from an official Report, a few local allu- 
sions are retained to show the original aim of the writer and the application of 
kindred plans and principles to other --fields. 



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CONTENTS. 



Objects of Rural Improvement Associations: — 

1. To cultivate public spirit and town pride, 

2. To quicken the intellectual life of the people, 

3. Promote good fellowship, ..... 

4. Secure better hygienic conditions, 

5. Improve road-sides, roads, side- walks, and light streets, 

6. Improve public grounds, ..... 

7. Educational bearings, ...... 

8. Improve the homes and home-life of the people, . 

9. Tree-planting, . . . . 

10. Economic bearings, . . . . 

11. Recuperation of sterile lands, . 

12. Improve the surroundings of railway stations, 

13. Minor aims, .....•• 

14. Betterment of factory surroundings, 

15. The Two Model Factories, ..... 

16. Plan or "Constitution" of a Rural Improvement Association, 



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EUEAL IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATIONS. 

When, over ten years ago, an effort was begun to improve 
and build up our country towns,* it encountered, as I then 
predicted, some misapprehension and ridicule. During this 
period of quiet work, my faith in the final result has never 
faltered. But sooner than I expected, this Rural Improvement 
movement has assumed such large proportions as to silence 
cavil, and command the respect and cooperation of the wisest 
and best men of our State. There are now over fifty of these 
V associations in Connecticut which speak for themselves. Their 
objects are manifold, of which the following are the more 
important : 

/ 1. To cultivate public spirit and foster town pride, is 
an object which should enlist the sympathies of all our 
citizens. Our youth should be trained in their homes 
and schools to be jealous of the good name of their town 
and State. Hence the history of our towns and our State 
should be generally taught in order to develop a just town 
and State pride. We are prone to underrate the great value 
of this feeling. The love of home and the love of one's 
town and State are akin. This sentiment formed in early life 
should grow with our years and attainments. The want of it 
indicates a serious defect of character. I believe with Dr. 
Bushnell that " the man who does not wish to love and honor 
the town and State in which he and his children were born has 
no heart in his bosom. We are too little aware of our noble 
history as a State, a history of such transcendent beauty, 
freshened by so many heroic incidents, having so great a 
wealth of character and achievement. This early history of 
Connecticut is really the most beautiful that was ever permit- 
ted to any people in the world." This cannot justly be called 
a partial but unfounded laudation of one's State. The Histo- 

* " How to beautify and build up our country towns" was the title of an article 
in my Report for 1869. 

2 



rian, Bancroft, a citizen of Massachusetts, biased by no Con- 
necticut predilections says, in language as striking as that of 
Dr. Bushnell, "There is no State in the Union, and I know not 
any in the world, in whose early history, if I were a citizen, I 
could find more of which to be proud and less that I should 
wish to blot." 

The sentiment that honors and cherishes one's birth-place 
is noble and ennobling. I am aware that a popular prejudice 
associates weakness and effeminacy with such taste and refine- 
ment. But this sentiment has ever characterized the greatest 
and best of men and is a prime element of true manhood. 
The cold and selfish soul is sterile in heroic virtues. There is 
an American railway king, now a millionaire, who seldom 
visits his native town, takes no interest in it, does nothing for 
it, and leaves even the old homestead and grounds, though still 
owned by him, neglected and forlorn. This fact alone natu- 
rally suggests a selfish, soulless character. Indeed such exam- 
ples are too common. On the other hand, the greatest grandeur 
of intellect accords with fervor of filial feeling, with fondest 
home attachments and with refinement and delicacy of taste. 
It is perfectly in keeping with the intellectual greatness of 
Daniel Webster to find him fondly cherishing and beautifying 
the old homestead, enriching and improving the paternal acres 
and eloquently discoursing on the sacred associations of home, 
the transcendent sweets of domestic life, the happiness of kin- 
dred, and parents and children. Washington was as delicate, 
courteous and affectionate in his domestic relations and attach- 
ments as he was wise in council and courageous in war. A 
beautiful trait in Bryant's character was evinced by his devo- 
tion to the old homestead and the little secluded town of 
Cummington among the Hampshire hills, hallowed to him by 
the memories of father and mother, and the sacred associations 
of childhood. To that little town which he did so much 
to adorn and enrich and educate, he ever deemed it a privi- 
lege to make an annual visit — a summer visit with his house- 
hold, often prolonged for weeks and months. That the early 
associations might remain, raising the old house, he built 
beneath and around it a stately mansion, so that the paternal 
rooms remained intact. 



Ex-Governor Hubbard well says, "this work of Village Im- 
provement* will not fail, I trust, to awaken public attention 
and provoke imitation throughout our State, and excite and 
even shame our own people into a larger public spirit and 
better efforts to redeem from negligence our rural homes and 
villages. Nearly all our towns are full of objects of natural 
beauty easy of development, and very many of them rich in 
legendary and historical associations. What is greatly wanted 
is something more of rural art and adornment. Something 
which shall beautify our country villages, educate public taste, 
make the homes of the fathers dearer to their sons and the local 
associations of childhood dearer to old age, and thus turn back, 
in part at least, the tide of migration from the rural towns, and 
make the city seek the country life and make it what it used 
to be in our own State, and what it still is in the oldest and 
most cultivated nations of the world." 

In our declining towns especially, local pride and public 
spirit should be fostered. Discouragement, if not self-dis- 
paragement, has been their danger and a source of increasing 
weakness. Instead of the despair that says " it is of no use, 
the fates are against us, we are doomed to decline more and 
more," true courage and patriotism would face the facts, 
inquire into their causes, and, if possible, find a remedy. The 
lack of public spirit has contributed to the decline of many 
towns. The evidence of this is sometimes seen in dilapidated 
school-houses, poor roads, absence of sidewalks, and neglected 
common, cemetery or church. Remembering that what any 
people can be depends largely on what they have been, the his- 
tory of our towns should kindle within us a just pride for the 
past and a new inspiration for the future. To this end, each 
town needs to be distinctly conscious of itself, jealous of its 
good name, liberal in supporting its schools and churches, 
adorning its park or "Village Green," cemetery and streets, 
and in every practicable way guarding its honor, and ambi- 
tious of its prosperity. 

In New England, the township is the unit, but in the Southern 
and in many of the "Western States the " parish" or the county 
is the unit, while the township organization is wanting or is 

* Referring to the example set in Haddam. 



6 

comparatively insignificant. The maintenance of schools and 
roads and bridges, the support of the poor and many kindred 
matters which in New England are town affairs, are there man- 
aged countywise. The town organizations with the town meet- 
ings where every citizen is the peer of any other, have been 
one of the prime factors in developing the sterling traits of 
New England character. They have fostered that self-reliance, 
independence and energy which have given strength and vitality 
to our northern civilization and effectively aided in the main- 
tenance of our free institutions. The influence and importance 
of the towns of New England was early and ably set forth by 
Samuel Adams. It was a sound motto of old John Adams, 
that " the ownership of land is essential to individual self-respect 
arid thrift and to national dignity and prosperity." It is not 
the landless, but farmers, who have been foremost as defenders 
of liberty because they have been thus defenders of home. The 
free land tenure, the system of small farms grouped into town- 
ships from the early settlement of New England fostered the 
free, liberty-loving spirit of our fathers, without which the Rev- 
olutionary war would have been impossible, for these "little 
democratic republics" nurtured that capacity for self govern- 
ment to which was due the achievement of our independence. 

Says Professor Joel Parker : " It was through these organiza- 
tions that an industrious yeomanry, while following the plow, 
and the diligent tenants of workshops while handling their 
tools, were converted into an armed soldiery on the first news 
that the British left the limits of Boston and were marching 
into the country. The dragons' teeth that produced that har- 
vest were sown in the shape of farmers and mechanics, who, 
holding themselves in readiness as minute men, required but 
the heat of warlike intelligence to burst into full life and vigor 
as a patriotic army. It was through these town organizations, 
and not through a want of patriotism elsewhere, that the sup- 
port of the Declaration of Independence was more effectual in 
New England than in any other of the colonies." 

Nothing analogous to our town system prevails in the South- 
ern States or in England. The influence of these town organi- 
zations and town meetings, where all meet on a level with- 
out distinction of race or party or sect, has largely caused 



the contrast in the civilization of the North and the South, from 
our early history till to-day. In the language of Senator Dawes, 
""With the township here, its vital force unimpaired, New 
England can never become South Carolina or Mississippi, and 
without the educating influence that comes of the town, neither 
South Carolina nor Mississippi will ever become New England 
in the enjoyment of liberty regulated by law. They are the 
very corner-stone of republican institutions among us, and they or 
their equivalent must take the place of that unorganized parish 
system by which Southern plantation society is loosely linked 
together, before a representative republic, in anything else than 
name, can be maintained among them. The town is not 
therefore to fade, but is to continue to be the nursery of intelli- 
gent, untrammeled, thinking freemen, the source, the supply of 
the government they themselves have instituted on this conti- 
nent." My sympathies and efforts have long been enlisted in 
behalf of the declining towns which most need help and encour- 
agement. 

This is one source of my interest in the work of Rural 
Improvement, now so widely diffused through the State. 
Connecticut cannot afford to allow any of these old towns to 
die out. Many of them have a noble history, and if we of the 
present generation do our duty, they are to have a grand future. 
A most encouraging history would be that fitly recording the 
achievements of those who have gone out from these rural dis- 
tricts which are thus continually enriching the great centers of 
population and wealth. 

2. To quicken the intellectual life of the people is an 
important aim of these associations. Besides the liberal 
support of schools, the founding of libraries is an important 
help in this direction which should be encouraged in all 
our towns. Their value cannot be over-estimated. The sup- 
ply of good books increases the demand. A taste for books 
has been awakened in many towns by a well-selected library 
where the improvement has been as marked in the quality 
as in the quantity of the books read. . Such a library natu- 
rally becomes the pride and treasure of a town, rendering 
it a more desirable place of residence, adding attractions to 
every intelligent home within its limits, and helping both 



8 

teachers and pupils in the schools. With books at hand, the 
teacher may be continually progressing. Without them he is 
in danger of getting into the ruts. The mind that ceases to 
progress soon retrogrades ; unless himself eager for improve- 
ment, the teacher can impart no inspiration or love of 
knowledge to his pupils. While libraries educate the whole 
people, I have been especially gratified to observe how diligently 
their volumes are used by the school boys and girls who would 
otherwise have only the dime novel or papers more objection- 
able. Once give a boy a taste for good books and access to a 
choice library, and then place him where you will, let his 
calling be what it may, he will find time for study and will 
devote the intervals of labor to reading. Multitudes of men, 
thus self-educated, owe their eminence and success to an early 
taste for reading and access to libraries. Their example should 
show our youth that their evenings need not be idled away 
because the days must be occupied with business or labor. 

3. The promotion of good fellowship is another aim. The 
charm of country life, so dependent on the interchange of 
neighborly courtesies and the maintenance of friendly relations, 
is often marred by needless strifes and alienations. The social 
life of a town is thus sadly embittered. A Kural Improve- 
ment Association tends to fraternize the people of a town by 
leading all classes to meet on common ground and work 
together for a common object. Thus differences of rank, or 
sect or party are forgotten, while as fellow-citizens they carry 
out plans of equal interest to all, and effectively combine 
to promote the general good. In some towns, good fellowship 
as well as intellectual improvement has been promoted by 
organizing reading circles. Selections in prose and poetry, 
often a play of Shakespeare, the several parts having been 
previously assigned, are the subject of careful private study 
and drill. These weekly circles make a profitable evening 
school. Their social influence is still more extended by an 
occasional " rehearsal " of a more public character. Divided 
as the residents of our rural districts and villages too often are 
by prejudice or neighborhood difficulties, every association 
where social amenities are cultivated should be encouraged. 
The support of a Tillage Reading Room, well supplied with 



9 

the leading journals of the day — daily, weekly, monthly or 
quarterly — is a movement in the same direction. A course of 
Lyceum Lectures is sustained by many Kural Improvement 
Associations, the profits of which are their "benefit" while the 
social opportunities thus opened are clear gain. 

An annual festival under the direction of the Kural Im- 
provement Association tends to deepen and sustain public 
interest in its work. In some towns literary exercises, ad- 
dresses, a poem, and music, fill the programme; in others a 
collation becomes another bond of union and fellowship. In 
the rigid, and sometimes frigid, state of rural life, too often found 
in New England, we need to cultivate the social amenities and 
learn the art of "turning work into play." The supposed 
monotony and dullness of country life drive many to the city. 
It is wise to multiply occasions for social enjoyment. The 
arbor-day festival may help to counteract the tendency of rural 
life to isolation and seclusion, lifting oat of the ruts of a dull 
plodding monotony, promoting neighborly feeling, and strength- 
ening social ties. The rural laborers in Switzerland and Ger- 
many socialize far more than American farmers. Their festive 
spirit is a strongly-marked feature of their character. It is 
manifested in the family, in neighborhood greetings and meet- 
ings, in schools, in rifle feasts, in processions and various social 
gatherings. They have a passion for nature, and love to fre- 
quent their beautiful groves and gardens, for parks or woods 
abound in or near their cities and towns. This genial spirit is 
everywhere fostered by music — both vocal and instrumental. 
As a result, there is an inexpressible something in the German 
character that carries mirthful and happy childhood into old 
age, giving an added charm to social life, and lightness and 
cheer to sober work. 

4. Another aim of these associations is the promotion of 
public health by securing better hygienic conditions in the 
homes of the people and in their surroundings. Some of our 
country towns, naturally favorable to health and longevity 
have suffered fearfully from the ravages of diseases, evidently 
caused by neglect of hygienic laws. In many towns much has 
lately been done in the matter of drainage, removal of waste 
and guarding wells and water supplies from impurities. 



10 

5. The improvement of road sides is attracting much atten- 
tion. Some towns have made appropriations to clear them of 
brush and rubbish and keep them like a lawn. Others are 
adorning them with extensive lines of trees. 

6. The improvement of roads, though of great importance, 
has secured less attention from these associations, as the town 
authorities usually care for them, and other objects are more 
urgent. Dr. Bushnell well says : " The road is that physical 
sign, or symbol, by which you will best understand any age or 
people. If they have no roads, they are savages ; for the road 
is the creation of man and a type of civilized society. If you 
wish to know whether society is stagnant, learning scholastic, 
religion a dead formality, you may learn something by going 
into universities and libraries ; something, also, by the work 
that is doing on cathedrals and churches, or in them; but 
quite as much by looking at the roads. For if there is any 
motion in society, the road, which is the symbol of motion, 
will indicate the fact. Nothing makes an inroad without mak- 
ing a road. All creative action, whether in government, in- 
dustry, thought or religion, creates roads." 

7. The making or improving of sidewalks meets a felt want 
in many towns. In no other way can the comfort and 
sociality of a village be promoted so economically as by making 
sidewalks. Simple gravel walks, when the concrete would be 
too expensive, serve an admirable purpose. One town has 
lately completed many miles of neat sidewalks, which add 
greatly to the attractiveness of the village. 

The fine footways abounding throughout England invite the 
pedestrian habits of the women of that country. It is largely 
because they exercise daily in the open air, that they retain so 
long the bloom and vigor of youth. More outdoor rambles 
would promote the health and prolong the lives of American 
women. Besides favoring the luxury and healthfulness of 
open air exercise, footways invite friendly calls and foster 
social life and rural enjoyment. 

8. Street lights remove another hindrance to social inter- 
course in country villages. When the day's work is done the 
evening is the favorite time for calls, if the darkness does not 
forbid. The cost of kerosene illuminators is now moderate. 



11 

It is one of the signs of social advancement that many of our 
associations are thus practically saying " Let there be light." 

9. Increased attention is given to parks, the village green, 
the cemetery, church grounds, school lots and other public 
grounds. I hope hereafter to give a brief sketch of the public 
parks of Connecticut, some of which are already exceedingly 
beautiful. Others are now planned which will contribute 
greatly to the beauty and adornment of our State. 

Two fine parks, recently provided by private munificence 
deserve a special mention. On the thirty-first day of October, 
1878, Hon. David Dudley Field, Stephen J. Field of the 
United States Supreme Court, Cyrus W*. Field, and Henry 
M. Field, D.D., surviving sons of Kev. David Dudley Field, 
D.D., appropriately celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of 
their father's marriage by presenting to the town of Haddam 
two tracts of land for a public park. These grounds, finely 
laid out with drives and walks by Mr. Olmsted of New York, 
th« landscape gardener, and adorned with the choicest orna- 
mental trees, indigenous and imported, is a grand contribution 
to the taste, sociality, good fellowship, education, growth and 
prosperity of the town. Isinglass Hill, a high bluff on the 
eastern border of these grounds commands for many miles a 
magnificent view of the Connecticut river and its valley, with 
the long range of hills beyond. In behalf of the friends of 
rural adornment and of education, so far as I may represent 
them, I desire to express to the eminent Field brothers, a high 
appreciation of their grand gift to Haddam and thus to Con- 
necticut, for our State takes a lively interest in the growth and 
prosperity of each of her towns. This worthy example ought 
to make many others, opportune as it is, in view of the grow- 
ing interest in rural improvement throughout our State. 
There is hardly one of our towns, that has not at home or 
abroad, some favored sons who by forming parks or founding 
schools or libraries, could easily render this most fitting tribute 
to their mother soil, and thus be gratefully recognized as the 
benefactors of their fellow citizens and of future generations. 
The ambition to beautify and benefit one's native town is 
worthy of the best and noblest characters. There is a rare 
luxury in witnessing the fruits of one's benefactions, giving 



12 

while living and able to enjoy the rich results, rather than 
leaving legacies to be lessened or lost in the wrangles of con- 
tending heirs. 

The value of a park was happily set forth by Hon. David 
Dudley Field in the following presentation address given before 
a large concourse of people at the dedication of these grounds. 

" We are here to deliver into your hands the parcel of 
ground on which we are standing, and that other which lies in 
view before us, to be kept as pleasure grounds for the people 
of Haddam in all time to come. We give them in memory of 
our father and mother, who were married seventy-five years 
ago to-day, and came immediately afterward to make their 
abode on this river-side, where he was soon to become the 
pastor of the church and congregation. Here they lived 
active and useful lives, in the fear of God and love of man, 
doing faithfully their several duties, he in public ministrations 
from pulpit and altar, at bridal, baptism, and burial, and she 
in the quiet tasks of her well-ordered household. Here they 
passed their first years together ; here they raised their first 
domestic altar, and here most of their children were born. 
For this cause, and in grateful remembrance of their love and 
sacrifices for us, we, their surviving children, four of us only 
out of ten, present these memorials, not of cold stone, though 
the hills about us teem with everlasting granite, but of shaded 
walks, green lawns, and spreading trees, where this people 
may find pleasure and refreshment, generation after generation, 
so long as these fertile meadows, these rugged hills, and this 
winding river shall endure. And remembering that " beauty 
is truth, truth beauty," we hope that they will cultivate here 
that love of nature, which is a joy in youth and a solace in 
age ; which nourishes the affections, and refines while it 
exalts ; which rejoices in the seasons and the months as they 
pass, with their varying beauties ; catches the gladness of June 
and the radiance of the October woods ; and in every waking 
moment, sees, hears, or feels something of the world around 
to take pleasure in and be grateful for. We trust that they 
will come, not in this year only or this century, but in future 
years and centuries, the fair young girl, the matron in the 
glory of womanhood, the boy and the man, grandson and 



13 

grandsire, in whatever condition or circumstance, poverty or 
riches, joy or sorrow, to find here a new joy or a respite from 
sorrow ; to drink in the light of sun and moon, listen to the 
music of birds and winds, feel the fresh breath of life-sustain- 
ing air, thank God and take courage. 

" Reverently then we dedicate these memorials of our parents, 
to the enjoyment forever hereafter of those, and the descend- 
ants of those, whom they loved, and among whom they dwelt." 

Roseland Park, in Woodstock, promises to be one of the 
largest and finest private parks in the country. It includes 
sixty acres of land, with an undulating surface, bordering on 
Woodstock Lake, a beautiful pear-shaped sheet of water one 
mile long and half a mile wide, situated in a broad amphi- 
theatre of wooded hills and fields, some fifteen miles long and 
five miles wide. The park contains three miniature mount's, 
the highest of which is Mount Eliot, so named from the 
"apostle" John Eliot who preached to the Indians in Wood- 
stock, and as tradition has it, upon this hill. About one- 
quarter of the ground, including the three hills, is already a 
well-wooded grove of chestnut, oak, maple, beach and but- 
ternut, many of which have reached majestic proportions. 
About 2000 ornamental trees of choicest varieties have 
recently been planted in these grounds and along the many 
paths and drive-ways. Over 8000 flowering shrubs, plants 
and rose bushes have also been set out. 200,000 loads of 
sand and loam have already been used in filling up marshy 
spots and inequalities and in grading walks, avenues and 
grass-plots, and as much more will be required to complete the 
present plans. The tasteful buildings erected on the " made 
grounds" near the lake are a fine boat and bath house, a 
keeper's lodge with ample stable and shed. A windmill sup- 
plies the dryer portion of the park with water. 

The citizens of Woodstock, and of Windham county, owe 
this magnificent park to Henry C. Bowen, of the New York 
Independent, who has already expended upon it over $40,000. 
Though the work is rapidly progressing and Mr. Bowen 
usually devotes five hours a day during the summer to assist- 
ing and directing these improvements, the work will not be 
completed till 1884. This park, accessible to all classes, is a 



14 

favorite place of resort to- the citizens of Woodstock and 
indeed of Windham county, who gratefully appreciate the 
taste and liberality of the proprietor. Thousands of people 
annually gather here to celebrate the fourth of July, and listen 
to the distinguished speakers invited to address them. In 
view of the number and eminence of the speakers and the wide 
range of their topics this celebration on these beautiful grounds 
is quite unique. 

10. The educational bearings of this subject, if less obvious, 
are not less important. The external improvements prompted 
by these associations have in many towns developed a local 
pride and public spirit which have displaced many a bleak, 
weather-worn and comfortless school-house. Public interest 
once enlisted in the adornment of streets, parks, cemeteries and 
kindred plans is sure to embrace the school-house. The people 
are learning that village improvement promotes the growth 
and prosperity of a town by inviting wealthy and desirable 
residents from abroad, just as neglected streets, school-houses 
and other signs of an illiberal policy invest a town with an 
air of discouragement and decay. The influence of such an 
association in cultivating the taste, fostering the study of 
nature, developing in youth a love of flowers, vines, shrub- 
bery and trees, all the stronger because they have planted or 
cultivated them, thus fostering domestic attachments and 
checking the excessive passion for city life, suggest some of 
the ways in which it supplements the work of the school. 
The love of nature sharpens the senses and quickens all the 
intellectual faculties. An early interest in natural history 
favors habits of observation and trains both the memory and 
imagination. 

The taste should be early cultivated. To love the beautiful 
should be held as a religious duty. In the very structure of 
our being, God rebukes the ignorance or indolence that so 
often dwarfs this noble faculty, designed to be an ally of virtue 
subordinating the animal and sensuous to the intellectual 
and spiritual. The love of the beautiful may become a 
source of high enjoyment, and give new incentives to mental 
effort. It reverently admires nature and makes her a constant 
teacher. 



15 

"No department of rnind ought to be placed higher than the 
love of the beautiful. The love of beauty in God must be 
immense. The love of beauty carries a high moral quality 
with it. It is a law that we should worship God in beauty. 
Nowhere was it more powerful than in the temple. We see it 
in Eevelation. The love of beauty increases in people the idea 
they have of the truth." 

A true Christian culture should lead our citizens, each to 
adorn his town, village, street, school-house, and first of all his 
home. Every tree, flower or shrub in the garden, every tasteful 
engraving or painting in the house, may add a new link to the 
golden chain which should ever bind the heart of childhood to 
the hearth-stone. Let taste brighten the joys of the domestic 
circle, and help to invest every scene in life with higher signifi- 
cance and beauty. The esthetic element as an educational 
force has been often ignored, and the craving of the juvenile 
mind for the beautiful rudely repressed. 

Nature is the great educator. Birds, flowers, insects, and 
all animals are our practical primary teachers. In God's plan, 
facts and objects as best seen in the country are the earliest 
and the leading instruments of developing the faculties of the 
juvenile mind. They cannot be fully trained when cooped up 
within brick walls, witnessing only city scenes. 

In all our history the country has proved the great School 
of mind. Here dwell and for wise reasons, here God intended 
should dwell, the great majority of mankind. The country 
sends far more than its proportion of gifted men to the great 
centers of influence. It is thus continually enriching the 
cities, for towards them are flowing, like their streams, the 
material and still more the mental treasures which have their 
origin in the mountain springs and without which the cities 
would die out. Called officially to visit all the towns of 
Massachusetts and Connecticut, I have often asked " what emi- 
nent men have you raised here." Almost every town can give 
a list of which they are justly proud. A most instructive his- 
tory would be that which should fitly record the achieve- 
ments of those who have gone out from these rural districts 
to fill positions of commanding influence. In the language 
of Dr. Bushnell : " It is not in the great cities, nor in the con- 



16 

fined shops of trade but principally in agriculture, that the 
best stock or staple of men is grown. It is in the open air 
— in communion with the sky, the earth and all living things 
— that the largest inspiration is drunk in and the vital energies 
of a real man constructed." Certainly the country may claim 
superior advantages for the physical, mental, and moral train- 
ing of the young, wherever good schools are maintained. 

Though I studied the Kindergarten system in Germany, and 
advocate it, I still contend that the best sort of Kindergarten 
is the open fields and varied objects of the country, if only 
the eye be trained to habits of careful observation. There, 
things are studied more than mere words, or rather the per- 
ception of objects and their qualities furnishes the material 
for thought and gives precision to language. Hugh Miller 
used to say : " The best school I ever attended was the miscel- 
lany of objects and circumstances surrounding me in my 
native district, challenging the first exercise of my senses and 
my fancy and that is a species of education open to all . ... 
Open your eyes, the commonest objects are worth looking 
at, even weeds and stones and the most familiar animals." 
He was educated by the rocks of old Cromarty on the shore 
of the North Sea. Scott was educated by the sounding surges 
of the sea. Webster was educated by the Salisbury Mountains. 
How different would have been the history of Washington 
had he spent his youth amid the excitements and diver- 
sions of a great city like London. Would Jefferson have 
attained his eminence and power, had he been early dandled 
in* the lap of affluence in a city like Paris ? How different 
would have been the career of the great naturalist of our day, 
had he spent his childhood in a large city. How fortunate for 
Agassiz and for the world that his native home was in the 
beautiful little village of Mottier in Switzerland, lying midway 
between the lakes of Neuchatel and Morat. The woody hills, 
the gardens and vineyards, the banks, cascades and lakes ; 
the Jura and more distant Alps, with magnificent glaciers, 
glistening fields of snow and ice ; these were his early teachers. 
His very sports served to convert the observing boy into the 
future naturalist. These were boating, fishing, hunting, study- 
ing birds and turtles, gathering bugs, butterflies and other 



f{ufkl L(ife ki\d Soir^. 



HOW TO BEAUTIFY AND BUILD UP OUR TOWN. 

His Excellency Charles B. Andrews, President of the State Board of 
Education, and Secretary Northrop, will address the citizens of Pomfret, on 
Thursday evening, July 3d, at 7.30 o'clock, on 

RURAL IMPROVEMENT. 

Some fifty Associations for Village Improvement have recently been 
organized in Connecticut, which have already done great good in cultivating 
public spirit, quickening social and intellectual life, and enhancing the value 
of real estate. These associations promote organized and judicious efforts for 
tree-planting, the improvement of streets, sidewalks, public parks, and build- 
ings, and private grounds and dwellings. If private taste, public spirit, and 
town pride can be duly enlisted, in connection with the certainty of pecuniary 
profit, the promotion of a greater fondness for rural pursuits and scenes, and 
the manifold advantages of every citizen, our streets, public roads, and homes 
may become still more beautiful and inviting. 

Public interest in rural adornment is rapidly increasing in Connecticut. 
This good work should go on till not a school house, dwelling, or street is 
left without the simple and grand adornment of shade trees, or shrubbery, 
flowers or lawn. A wise foresight will show that no community can afford 
to be without a Rural Improvement Association. The Lectures are free. 
All are invited. 

Pomfret, Juue 17, 1879. 



17 

insects, roaming in the woods, taking long excursions on Lake 
Neuchatel, in whose waters clear to an unusual depth he could 
find the haunts and study the habits of the fish ; climbing 
steep hills and rocky cliffs and even ascending the magnificent 
precipices of the Jura. Living much in the open air, he 
observed the birds so as to distinguish them by their beak, 
claws, size, form, plumage, song or flight. If in early life he 
knew less of books he had studied nature more. 

The late Charles Hammond, one of the most successful of 
American teachers, used to say he was educated by the grand 
scenery of his native town — Union — comprising the highest 
land in the State east of the Connecticut river. From the 
homestead, he could see the church spires in many of the 
surrounding towns. From a hill near by, he used to "gaze 
at Wachusett Mountain in Massachusetts, and in a clear day 
could distinctly see the deep blue peak of Monadnock in 
Jeffrey, New Hampshire." To continue his own words, " my 
father observed nature and loved flowers, and early taught me 
to observe the properties of plants and trees, and learn the 
names, habits, retreats and voices of the birds." He often 
revisited this grand scenery to which he attributed the inspira- 
tion of his youth. 

I often advise the sons of wealth in our cities to spend at 
least one- year in the country, with its freer sports, and wider 
range of rambles, or better still, for both physical and mental 
training, to give one season to hard work on the farm or in the 
shop. The practical skill thus gained in adapting means to 
ends in observing things, common objects and animals, may 
compensate for some loss of book learning and lead one 
afterwards, like Agassiz, to pursue text-books with greater zest. 

11. My interest in this work centers in the improvement of 
the homes and home life of our people. " The hope of America 
is the homes of America," and the hope of Connecticut is the 
homes of Connecticut. There remain still too many homes 
and grounds desolate, neglected and repulsive, where taste and 
trees, shrubbery, hedges or creeping vines with a lawn would 
make " the wilderness blossom as the rose." Unquestionably, 
neglect and slatternliness in and around the house repel from 
their rural homes many youth who might otherwise be bound 



18 

in strongest ties to the fireside. Our farmers and mechanics, 
or their thoughtful and thrifty wives, are beginning to realize 
how easily and economically, often without any outlay of 
money, they can surround their homes with flowers, the Vir- 
ginia creeper, grape vines or trees, and thus increase the 
beauty, the attractions and market value of the homestead. 
These embellishments of the home and grouuds help to culti- 
vate domestic sentiments. 

Without a Eural Improvement Association our best towns 
fall far short of what they might be and ought to be. Too 
often, neglected private grounds, dilapidated dwellings, barns 
or sheds, or a street ugly with piles of decaying brush or 
chips, discarded fruit cans, broken harrows, carts or sleds, 
a front fence with missing pickets and a disabled gate, give 
an air of shiftlessness that sadly mars the effect of an 
otherwise beautiful village. Here an Association is needed to 
develop that private taste and public spirit which will remove 
such defects and disfigurements. When every citizen is thus 
stimulated to make his own grounds and wayside not only 
free from rubbish, but neat and attractive, the entire town 
becomes so inviting and home-like as to give new value to 
its wealth and new attractions to all its homes. Such affec- 
tionate care and attention to the homes indicate a kindly, 
intelligent, home-loving people, and no better praise need be 
given to any people than that they tenderly cherish their homes. 
A stranger can hardly drive through such a town without say- 
ing " Here are people, of refinement, who love their homes, 
and therefore tastefully guard the surroundings of their daily 
life." These surroundings, trifling as they seem to some, are 
the more important, because they are constant forces in mould- 
ing character. " Cleaning up, dusting, putting things in order," 
are little matters in the parlor, sitting-room or kitchen, yet 
how soon each becomes forbidding, when these trifles are neg- 
lected. Just so in a village, these minor matters neglected, 
and the comfort, content, reputation and prosperity of a whole 
community suffer, but worst of all, home life suffers and char- 
acter deteriorates. 

Modern civilization relates specially to the homes and social 
life of the people, to their health, comfort and thrift, their 



19 

intellectual and moral advancement. In earlier times and 
other lands, men were counted in the aggregate. They were 
valued as they helped to swell the revenues or retinues of kings 
and nobles. The government was the unit, and each individual 
only added one to the roll of soldiers or serfs. With us, 
the individual is the unit and the government is for the people 
as well as b}^ the people. 

It is a good omen that public interest in the embellishments 
of rural homes and villages is widely extending, and that the 
varied charms of the country with its superior advantages for 
the physical and moral training of children are attracting many 
thoughtful men to the simpler enjoyments and employments of 
rural life. With the growth of public taste the day is not 
distant when beautiful country seats and villages will abound 
throughout Connecticut. Dr. Bushnell, with his keen observa- 
tion and intense love of rural scenery was wont to say, "No 
part of our country between the two oceans is susceptible of 
greater external beauty than Connecticut." A taste for rural 
adornment is a source of physical, mental and moral health 
as well as enjoyment. The parentage of parks, lawns, trees, 
flowers, vines and shrubs becomes a matter of just pride and 
binds one to the spot he has adorned. 

The hankering for city diversions and excitements, and am- 
bition for easier lives and more genteel employments have 
brought ruin to multitudes and financial disaster to the nation. 
A great peril to the land to-day comes from the swelling 
throngs, ranging from the reckless tramp to the fashionable 
idler, who are ever devising expedients, foul or fair, to get 
a living without work. The disparagement of country life has 
been one of the worst tendencies of the times. 

Every influence should therefore be combined to foster 
home attachments, for there is protection as well as education 
in the fervent love of home with its sacred associations. Patri- 
otism itself hinges on the domestic sentiments. When one's 
home becomes the Eden of taste and interest and joy, those 
healthful local ties are formed which bind him first and most to 
the spot he has embellished, and then to his town, his State 
and country. Whatever adorns one's home and ennobles his 
domestic life, strengthens his love of country and nurtures all 

3 



20 

the better elements of his nature. On the other hand, do man 
without local attachments can have genuine patriotism. As 
happy in one place as in another, he is like a tree planted in a 
tub, portable indeed, but at the expense of growth and strength. 
Said Monsieur Lariaux, the French Deputy to the American 
Evangelical Alliance, in his farewell address, " your homes, 
homes, sweet homes — these are the safeguards of your freedom. 
Oh, pray, as you gather at your family altars, that my poor 
France may have such homes." 

In traveling thousands of miles annually for many years, 
my experience has led me to expect kindness and refinement 
in the humblest hamlet to which flowers, well trimmed shrubs, 
or neat and cultivated grounds invite. But these outward 
adornments of the house, however valuable, are but symbols of 
what should be the attractions of its inner life, realizing the 
highest beauty in the unwearied and delicate attentions of each 
to all. The central duty of life is the creation of happy homes. 
The higher aim of the industries of the world, whether in agri- 
culture, manufactures or commerce, and the purpose for which 
government itself is worthy to be sustained, is that men may 
live in happy homes. Let then the sunlight of generous love 
fertilize our homes as the garden of God — worthy to be as 
heaven designed, a divine institution, the only earthly paradise, 
the best symbol of and the best school for the paradise above, 
the spot most sacred on earth, to be cherished with the most 
grateful memories in all the future. Back to this holy ground 
consecrated by flowers and shrubs and trees each tenderly asso- 
ciated with a mother's love and a father's care, let Thanksgiving 
gather the scattered circle. Let the Christmas tree bear some 
fruit, even for the youngest. Let the birthdays be happily 
observed, and the marriage anniversary joyfully remembered. 

The home should be the first and chief place to promote a 
love of flowers, vines, shrubs and trees by cultivating them, 
and thus early develop a love for the beautiful in nature, in 
art and still more in character. "We need more heartily to 
cultivate home affections, provide home enjoyments and foster 
home courtesies. In the every day intercourse of home, there 
should be a more sacred observance of the amenities of life 
and a freer interchange of kindly feeling. As flowers seem 



21 

worthless to the thoughtless, so the morning and evening 
salutations in the family may seem little in themselves, but 
when fitly observed are mighty in their influence. As the 
sunbeam is composed of myriads of minute rays, so the home 
should be illumined and brightened by nature's richest hues 
without and still more by winning smiles within, cordial greet- 
ings, loving looks, gentle words, sweet laughter and nameless 
little kindnesses. Such beauties of nature and art, such ameni- 
ties and affections should be the sunshine of home. They 
refresh and purify the social circle. Like the clinging vine, 
they twine themselves around the heart, calling forth its purest 
emotions and securing its most healthful activity. Such a 
home is worthy the name Ordinance of Grod. Such a heaven 
here will help prepare its members for the heaven above. 
Such an ideal may be an inspiration towards its realization. 

If parents combine to make the circle of home-life beautiful 
without and within, they will sow the seeds of truth, kindness, 
honesty, and fidelity in the hearts of their children from which 
they may reap a harvest of happiness and virtue. The mem- 
ory of a beautiful and happy home, and a sunny childhood is 
one of the richest legacies parents can leave to their children. 
The heart will never forget its hallowed influences. It is a 
fountain of enjoyment, to which the lapse of years will only 
add new sweetness. Such a memory is a constant inspiration 
for good and restraint from evil. If taste and culture adorn 
our homes, and grounds, and music adds its charms, our 
children will find the healthful pursuits and pleasures of rural 
homes more attractive than the pomp, and glare, and whirl 
of city life. Such early occupations and enjoyments will 
invest home life, and then school life and all ones future with 
new interest and value, with new significance and joyousness. 
For life is ever what we make it. We may by our blindness 
or folly or sin live in a world of darkness and gloom, or we 
may live in a world full of sunlight, and beauty, and joy, for 
the world without always reflects the world within. 

12. These Associations have awakened new interest in tree- 
planting, both ornamental and economic. In answer to the 
question what ornamental trees to plant, I have usually recom- 
mended among our native trees the following, naming them in 



22 

the order of preference : The elm, maple, tulip, ash, linden or 
basswood, hemlock, white oak, black walnut, and hickory. 

The white ash deserves more favor both as an ornamental 
and a timber tree. Combining lightness, strength, toughness, 
elasticity and beauty of grain in a rare degree, it is in great 
and growing demand for farming tools, furniture, interior 
finishing of houses and railroad cars, the construction of car- 
riages, for oars and pulley blocks, and many other purposes. 
The excellence of our ash is one secret of the preference given 
abroad to American agricultural implements. It is hardy, will 
bear the bleakest exposure, is a rapid grower and attains large 
size, but will not thrive on poor lands. It is every way supe- 
rior to the European ash, much as that has been cultivated and 
lauded abroad. 

Connecticut is rich in its variety of native trees, having 
nearly sixty species, of which about forty are sizable for tim- 
ber. The elm, when growing under favorable conditions, has 
been pronounced " the most magnificent vegetable of the tem- 
perate zone." The tulip tree or common white wood deserves 
much greater favor as an ornamental tree. It is a rapid grower, 
has a straight stem and attains large size. Taken from the 
woods when ten or fifteen feet high, it is not likely to live, but 
transplanted young from the nursery it proves thrifty and 
hardy. It is a common mistake to select too old trees for 
transplanting — so old that they must be beheaded. Not even 
the elm ever developes its full symmetry when subjected to 
such unnatural treatment. It is better to transplant all trees 
so young that with complete roots and good care they can grow 
without cropping. 

Among imported trees the European larch should hold a 
prominent place. It combines the three qualities of rapidity 
of growth, symmetry of form and durability of timber. Mr. 
Maro Hammond, of Vernon, covered a worn-out, unsightly, 
gravelly hill in the rear of his home with a thousand larch, dur- 
ing this spring of 1880. If these thrive, he is to set out a much 
larger number next spring. John W. Nichols, of Branford, 
plants a large number this year. Three thousand larch and 
other exotics were set out in Clinton last .year, besides many 
native trees. Some ten thousand larch trees were planted 



23 

last spring in Pomfret to reclaim exhausted hillsides. If these 
experiments in recuperating sterile soils are successful, they 
may lead to important economic results in addition to the 
adornment given to fields now barren and unsightly. Grigor 
says, "No tree is so valuable as the larch in its fertilizing 
effects arising from the richness of its foliage which it sheds 
annually. The yearly deposit is very great ; the leaves remain 
and are consumed on the spot where they drop." Trees also 
enrich the soil by a curious chemistry which disintegrates even 
the rocks, and transmutes their particles into forms of life and 
beauty. The radicles and rootlets, in their under-ground labor- 
atory, secrete acids which dissolve the very sands and stones. 

In many positions groves are of great service as wind-breaks ; 
even narrow strips of trees afford a shelter to fruit trees and to 
various crops, as well as a shield to cattle from piercing winds. 
Evergreens serve best for screens, as deciduous trees are leaf- 
less when their shelter is most needed, especially for stock 
and around farm buildings. The evergreens most suitable 
for this purpose are the Norway spruce, white pine, Scotch 
pine, and Austrian pine; and next to these are the American 
arbor vitae, hemlock, and spruce. Sheltered orchards are most 
productive and less likely to lose their fruit prematurely by 
violent winds, and the farmer with proper wind-screens con- 
sumes less fuel in his house and less forage in his stables. 

In some portions of Germany the law formerly required 
every landholder to plant trees along his road frontage. Happy 
would it be for us if the sovereigns of our soil would each 
make such a law for himself. Happy, also, if the law of 
usage, fashion, or interest here, as did the civil law there, 
required that every young man before he married should 
plant a wedding tree. In some of our Western States tree- 
planting by the road-side is encouraged by a bounty from the 
State treasury, and in the fields by both a bounty and exemp- 
tion from taxation for a term of years. The law in Minnesota 
provides that u every person planting, protecting and cultiva- 
ting forest trees for three years, one-half mile or more along 
any public highway, shall be entitled to receive for ten years 
thereafter an annual bounty of two dollars for each half-mile 
so planted and cultivated, to be paid out of the State treas- 



24: 

ury; but such bounty shall not be paid any longer than such 
line of trees is maintained." I may be pardoned for repeating 
a personal allusion. The maples which I planted, when a 
mere boy, before the old homestead in Litchfield county, are 
now beautiful and stately trees. As I have often said, they 
have paid me a thousand-fold for the work they cost, and 
added new charms to that beautiful spot, to which I count it a 
privilege to make an annual visit. Among the memories of 
my boyhood, no day has recurred with such frequency and 
satisfaction as that then devoted to tree-planting. My interest 
in this subject is due to this incident (or perhaps accident) of 
my boyhood. I should be thankful if I could help put a sim- 
ilar incident, and an equally grateful experience, into the child- 
hood of our boys of to-day. 

In tree-planting, the economic and ornamental, touch at so 
many points that the cases are rare where they really diverge. 
Nothing, for example, can add so much to the beauty and 
attractiveness of our country roads as long avenues of fine 
trees. One sees this beautifully illustrated in France, where, for 
over a hundred miles on a stretch, the road is lined with 
trees. In many ways the first Napoleon's interest in arbori- 
culture proved a benefaction to France. No time should be 
lost in securing the same grand attraction to the highways of 
Connecticut. Growing on land otherwise running to waste, 
such trees would yield most satisfactory returns. The shade 
and beauty would be grateful to every traveler, but doubly so 
to the owner and the planter, as the happy experience of many 
Connecticut farmers can testify. A grand work in this direc- 
tion is already well started. No class can contribute so much 
to the adornment of our public roads as the farmers. They 
have already in abundance the very best trees for the roadside, 
such as the elm, maple, ash, American linden (or bass), oak, 
and in some localities the walnut. The hard maple will thrive 
in dry and gravelly soils, while the elm and red maple are 
specially desirable for moist, low ground. As the maples 
should be planted twenty-five feet apart, and the elms from 
forty to fifty, poplars or willows or trees growing rapidly from 
scions, may be placed between, to be cut down when their 
statelier neighbors require the room for their full development. 



25 

Tree-planting is fitted to give a needful lesson of forethought 
to the juvenile mind. Living only in the present and for the 
present, youth sow, too often, only where they can quickly 
reap. A meager crop soon in hand, outweighs a golden 
harvest long in maturing. They should learn to forecast the 
future as the condition of wisdom. Arboriculture is a disci- 
pline in foresight — it is always planting for the future, and 
sometimes for the distant future. Says Washington Irving, 
" There is something nobly simple and pure in such a taste for 
trees. It argues a sweet and generous nature to have this 
strong friendship for the hardy and glorious sons of the forest. 
There is a serene majesty in woodland scenery that enters into 
the soul, dilates and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclina- 
tions. There is a grandeur of thought connected with this 
heroic line of husbandry. It is worthy of liberal and free- 
born and aspiring men. He who plants an oak, looks forward 
to future ages and plants for posterity. He cannot expect to 
enjoy its shelter, but he exults in the idea that the acorn 
which he has buried in the earth shall grow up into a lofty pile, 
and shall keep on flourishing and increasing and benefiting 
mankind long after he has ceased to tread his paternal fields." 
It was the trees of his own planting at Sunnyside-on-the- 
Hudson, more than the beauty of the surrounding landscape, 
that led Irving to say, "After all my wanderings, I return to 
this spot with a heartfelt preference for it over all others in the 
world." It was the simple beauty he had created at Marsh- 
field, — the grassy lawns, the shaded approaches, the hundreds 
of trees of his planting, — that bound Daniel Webster so 
strongly to that sequestered spot. The charm of Abbotsford, 
the grand Mecca of Scotland, comes mainly from its beautiful 
ivy and shrubbery and the thousands of trees planted by the 
hand of its illustrious proprietor. Says Sir Walter Scott, 
" My heart clings to this place I have created. There is scarce 
a tree in it that does not owe its being to me. Once well 
planted, a tree will grow when you are sleeping, and it is 
almost the only thing that needs no tending." 

Over three million dollars have been expended in the last 
ten years in Connecticut, in building and repairing school 
houses. Wise and necessary as was this expenditure, had one- 



26 

hundredth part of this sum been spent annually in planting 
trees and adorning the school grounds, a still better result 
would have been accomplished in cultivating the taste of our 
youth, leading them to study and admire our noble trees, and 
realize that they are the grandest and most beautiful products 
of nature and form the finest drapery that adorns this earth in 
all lands. Thus taught, they will wish to plant and protect 
trees, and find in their own happy experience that there is a 
peculiar pleasure in their parentage, whether forest, fruit or 
ornamental — a pleasure that never cloys, but grows with their 
growth. Such offspring they will watch with pride, as every 
year new beauties appear. Like grateful children, they bring 
rich filial returns and compensate a thousand-fold for the trou- 
ble they cost. This love of trees early implanted in the school 
and fostered in the home, will be sure to make our youth prac- 
tical arborists. They should learn that trees have been the ad- 
miration of the greatest and best men in all ages. The ancients 
understood well the beauty and hygienic value of trees. The 
Hebrews almost venerated the Palm. It was the chosen sym- 
bol of Judea on their coins and graven on the doors of the 
temple as the sacred sign of justice. The Cedar of Lebanon 
was the pride of the Jews and became to them the emblem 
of strength and beauty as is seen in Ezekiel's description of a 
Cedar in Lebanon with fair branches and with a shadowing 
shroud and of a high stature and his top was among the thick 
boughs. The height was exalted above all the trees of the 
field and his boughs were multiplied and his branches became 
long. Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his 
branches, nor any tree in the garden of God like unto him in 
beauty. 

The Egyptians, Greeks and Eomans were proficients in tree 
planting. Hence Thebes, Memphis, Athens, Carthage, Eome, 
Pompeii and Herculaneum, as their very ruins still show, had 
each their shaded streets or parks. Two thousand years ago, 
it was the ambition of the richest Eomans to maintain a rural 
home in or near the city as it is of the wealthy Londoner, 
Viennese, or Berliner to-day, and their ancient villas were most 
lavishly adorned. The Paradise of the Persians was filled with 
blossoming trees and long lines of roses. This taste for beauti- 



27 

ful gardens was transplanted from Persia to Greece, and the 
greatest Grreek Philosophers held their schools in beautiful 
gardens and groves. The devastation of parks, the destruction 
of shade trees, the neglect of public streets and private grounds, 
the decay of rural tastes and the utter slight of home adorn- 
ments were clearer proofs of the great relapse to barbarism than 
the vandalism which merely destroyed the proud monuments 
of classic art and literature. 

In tree planting, the beginning only is difficult. It is the 
first step that costs — at least it costs effort and persuasion to set 
this thing on foot — but that step once taken, others are sure to 
follow. On this account, I have tried various devices to get 
our youth initiated in tree-planting. In 1876 an effort was made 
to promote " Centennial Tree-Planting " by the offer of prizes, 
which proved successful far beyond my expectation. Many 
youth in ^Connecticut whose first experience as little arborists 
was prompted by those prizes, have become so interested in 
this pleasant work that they have continued it each subsequent 
spring. In 1878 the accident of the blowing down of a famous 
willow led me to offer them several thousand scions. Beau- 
tiful as that exotic is, I was careful to state that it is not com- 
parable to many of our majestic natives, saying in a circular 
then addressed to our boys: "Because the main tug is at the 
start, on account of the inertia of ignorance and indifference, 
that start should be made easy. I should greatly prefer to 
start five thousand elms or maples this year in Connecticut, if 
it could be done as easily as my five thousand willow scions 
seem likely to be stuck in the ground. This proposal is made 
as a mere beginning in tree planting, sure to lead to something 
more and better." 

These and other plans have manifestly increased the interest 
of our youth in arboriculture through the State, There is 
nothing more ennobling than the consciousness of doing- 
something for future generations, something which shall prove 
a growing benefaction in coming years. Tree-planting is an 
easy way of perpetuating one's memory long after he has 
passed away. The poorest can in this way provide himself 
with a monument grander than the loftiest shaft of chiseled 
stone, which may suggest duty to the living while it commemo- 



28 

rates the dead. Such associations grow in interest from year to 
year and from generation to generation. It will yield a rich 
harvest to future generations, if we can now stimulate a revival 
of arboriculture throughout our State. I confess to a grateful 
pride in the fact that something in this line has been recently 
accomplished in nearly every town of Connecticut. If this 
work is duly extended, our whole State will be transformed 
into a series of beautiful villages. Nothing can add such a 
charm to our country roads as long and magnificent avenues of 
stately trees. 

The benefits that may accrue to our country from the dis- 
cussion of tree-planting, were strikingly exhibited two hundred 
and fourteen years ago, when Sir John Evelyn published his 
celebrated work, entitled, " Sylva. ; or, a Discourse on Forest 
Trees and the Propagation of Timber." It was at once 
received with great public favor, and honored with royal com- 
mendation. He had remarkable success in awakening general 
interest in sylviculture. He was one of the founders of the 
Koyal Society, and wrote this book at its special request, and 
that society has originated few books in the last, two hundred 
years more useful than this which still survives in its grand 
results, although his other works on painting, sculpture, archi- 
tecture, and medals have long since been forgotten. In many 
ways England has recognized her great obligations to the man 
who worked so lovingly and effectively for the good of his 
countrymen. 

Disraeli, in his " Curiosities of Literature," fittingly says : 
" Had Evelyn only composed the great work of his Sylva, his 
name would have excited the gratitude of posterity. The 
voice of the patriot exults in the dedication to Charles II, pre- 
fixed to one of the later editions, in which he says : 'I need 
not acquaint your Majesty how many millions of timber trees, 
besides infinite others, have been planted throughout your vast 
dominions at the instigation of this work, because your Majesty 
has been pleased to own it publicly for my encouragement.' 
Surely, while Britain retains her situation among the nations 
of Europe, the Sylva of Evelyn will endure with her triumph- 
ant oaks. It was a retired philosopher who aroused the genius 
of the nation, and who, casting a prophetic eye towards the 



29 

age in which we live, contributed to secure our sovereignty of 
the seas. The present navy of Great Britain has been con- 
structed with the oaks which the genius of John Evelyn 
planted." 

13. The economic bearings of this subject claim attention. 
The money wisely expended for the adornment and improve- 
ment of a town is a good investment. It pays in many ways. 
Such improvements help to retain in a town its wealthy and 
public-spirited citizens, whom a narrow and unprogressive pol- 
icy would repel. Dr. Bodwell, who was long a resident in 
England, took a deep interest in this subject, when professor in 
the Theological Seminary of Hartford, and after journeying 
widely through Connecticut, said, "This village improvement 
all over our State is of great promise in a variety of ways. 
One most valuable result will be that a larger proportion of 
the enterprising young men will stay at home and cultivate 
the farms and make it a good thing too, with their intelligence 
and improved methods, and then the maidens will stay of 
course, and weddings will multiply, and the old homes will 
again be full of rosy children as in 'the ages past,' and the 
commonwealth will make a new and noble start in the career 
of riches and honor. In traveling over the State, one is con- 
stantly greeted with new surprises in the discovery of charm- 
ing landscape pictures, with the finest possible sights for delight- 
ful residences; such as merchant princes might envy. Eng- 
land in its natural features is not comparable to Connecticut in 
wide variety of the picturesque and romantic. How exceed- 
ingly beautiful our little Commonwealth is destined to become 
at a future day, by the culture which is every day extending 
under the lead of village improvement associations, and in the 
erection of elegant country seats, is a thought continually sug- 
gested." 

In the history of our towns public improvements and growth 
often stand related as cause and effect. Immigration from 
New York is one source of the increase of these towns. Since 
the solution of the long-vexed problem of rapid transit by the 
elevated railroads, Connecticut has the opportunity of inviting 
or repelling desirable residents in greatly increasing numbers. 
Growing rapidly as New York now is, where shall its swelling 



30 

throngs of business men find their homes? A liberal spirit 
will invite wealth and population in still larger measure to our 
borders. The new comers from New York city to the shore 
line and other progressive towns are the friends of public 
improvements, because these are investments which ultimately 
enrich a community. A penurious policy is penny-wise and 
pound-foolish. It defeats its own aim of saving, and results in 
final deterioration and loss. Men of affluence and culture 
shun a narrow-minded and illiberal community. A good name 
tends to enrich a town as well as an individual, while a bad 
one may impoverish both. 

14. There is no rural improvement more practical and valuable 
than the recovery of once fertile lands now lost to tillage. The 
waste lands of New England and the Atlantic states are already 
very extensive. They consist of, first, exhausted pasture land 
once arable, second, rough, rocky hills and hill-sides, formerly 
good grazing ground, but now so overrun with hard-hack or 
other useless bushes as to be worthless for pasturage, third, 
swamps, marshes, moors and bogs, and fourth, sand-barrens. 
Except the third class here named, nearly all these lands have 
been made barren by our improvidence and carelessness. My 
special aim has been to encourage the recuperation of such 
lands by tree planting. 

For the reclamation of our pastures and waste lands aban- 
doned to hard-hack, sumac, and other worthless brush, the 
European larch deserves to become a favorite. A native of 
the Alps, Apennines, of the Tyrol and Carpathian Mountains, it 
is a very hardy tree, and at home in a variety of well-drained 
soils, especially on rough, rocky, or gravelly ground, and the 
most rugged ravines. There are in our State large tracts of 
bleak hill-sides and mountain declivities or summits exhausted 
and now practically worthless, where the larch, thickly planted, 
would soon choke out all brush, and weeds. As an orna- 
mental tree it grows finely even in deep and rich loam, but its 
extraordinary qualities for timber may be impaired when grown 
on the rich prairies of the West or the best lands of the East. 
When raised under right conditions, it combines the two qual- 
ities of rapidity of growth and durability of wood more than 
any other tree. More than two thousand years ago this wood 



31 

was in high fayor with the Romans for the building of ships 
and bridges. Julius Caesar spoke strongly of its strength and 
durability. 

I heard a lumber-man in Venice say that its durability was 
amply attested there, as most of the houses of the city are built 
upon larch piles, many of which, though in use for centuries, 
show no signs of decay. In a large Doge's palace, now used 
as a hotel, he showed me some very ancient larch window- 
casings which are still sound. For gondola posts in the canals 
adjoining the houses the larch is preferred. In wharves and 
many other positions in England, where there is an alternation 
of wet and dry with the tide, the larch has stood this most try- 
ing test far better than oak. In England it is regarded as the 
best timber for railway ties. Monville says: "In Switzerland, 
the larch, as the most durable of woods, is preferred for shin- 
gles, fences, and vine-props. These vine-props remain fixed 
for years, and see crop after crop of vines bear their fruit and 
perish without showing any symptoms of decay. Props of sil- 
ver fir would not last more than ten years." Evelyn says: 
" It makes everlasting spouts and pent-houses, which need 
neither pitch nor painting to preserve them." Michie affirms 
that " For out-door work it is the most durable of all descrip- 
tions of wood. I have known larch posts that have stood for 
nearly fifty years." Professor Sargent expresses the opinion 
that " For posts it will equal in durability our red cedar, while 
in the power to hold nails it is greatly its superior." The chest- 
nut railway sleeper, secreting an acid which corrodes iron, loses 
its power to hold the spikes in about seven years, though the 
tie itself may not so soon seriously rot. The larch, while it 
holds iron as firmly as oak, unlike the latter, does not corrode 
iron. 

The president of the Illinois Central Railway, having exam- 
ined the vast planted forests of larch in Europe and learned its 
remarkable fitness for railway ties, offers to transport the young 
plants free of charge to any point on their lines or leased lines, 
provided they are to be planted in the vicinity of the same. 
It is, however, an experiment which time alone can determine, 
whether the larch will retain its durability when planted in 
the level, deep, vegetable mould of the prairies, with their 



32 

retentive sub-soil. That it will grow there rapidly and luxu- 
riantly is amply proved, but its history for many centuries 
shows that elevated lands suit it better than low grounds, and 
side-hills and mountain slopes better than flats. In the rich 
river flats of Kew Gardens and in the vicinity of London the 
larch does not thrive. The specimens found in that remarka- 
ble collection of all known trees are puny. The Kew arborist 
informed me that in the two hundred and seventy acres appro- 
priated to the arboretum, no spot had been found suited to the 
larch. 

No other tree has been planted so extensively in Scotland. 
It attains maturity long before the oak, and serves well for 
nearly all purposes for which oak is used. Larch trees thirty 
years old are sometimes sold for fifteen dollars each, while oaks 
of the same age are not worth three dollars each. As the 
larch grows erect, with short and slender laterals, it may be 
planted much thicker than the oak. According to Loudon, 
ten acres of larch will furnish as much ship timber as seventy- 
five acres of oak. Its large timber yield per acre is one source 
of its popularity in Britain. _ It was first planted on the estate of 
the Duke of A thole, in 1741. Some stately specimens nearly 
one hundred and forty years old ma} 7 be seen near the cathe- 
dral at Dunkeld. Mr. McGregor, the duke's forester, informed 
me that on this one estate have been planted over twenty- 
seven millions of larch trees, covering over sixteen thousand 
acres, some of which was formerly worth only from one to two 
shillings per acre. Dr. James Brown says he has seen matured 
crops of larch of sixty-five years' standing sold for from $750 
to $2,000 per acre, when the land was originally worth only 
from $2 to $4 per acre. 

The reclamation of marshes by drainage, both surface and 
subsoil, has been carried on for so long a period and on so 
broad a scale and with such grand results as to need no de- 
tailed discussion here. England, Ireland and Holland, to 
name no other countries of Europe, contain millions of acres 
of such land, now reclaimed and exceedingly fertile. Even 
lakes from ten to fifteen miles in length have been drained. 
In 1848 was completed the draining of the Lake of Haarlem 
in Holland. The lands thus recovered have since been sold 



33 

by the Government for nearly $3,500,000, or about $80 per 
acre. The success of this grand experiment has prompted 
others, like the draining of the Zuid Plas — a lake covering 
nearly 12,000 acres, and the great work now progressing to 
drain an arm of the Sheld, which will recover some 35,000 
acres. Encouraged by the results of these enterprises, the 
Netherlandish engineers now advocate the stupendous project 
of draining the great salt water basin of the Zuiderzee — an 
inland sea which covers 1,300,000 acres. The Italians have 
nearly completed the work of enlarging and deepening the 
tunnel cut by the Emperor Claudius 1800 years ago, to drain 
Lake Celano. 30,000. workmen were employed on this sub- 
tearanean passage for eleven years. Though this remarkable 
undertaking — the wonder of that age — was successful, in the 
following reign it fell into disrepair and continued to be neg- 
lected for centuries. It is one of many proofs of the revived 
energy and enterprise of the present generation, rivaling their 
historic ancestors, that they have restored and surpassed this 
old Roman work. This new tunnel, more than four miles in 
length and costing over six millions of dollars, will ultimately 
recover for agricultural occupation forty-two thousand acres of 
most fertile land. Already some 36,000 acres of rich arable 
land have been reclaimed, on which the crops yield a profit of 
from thirty to thirty-six per cent. 

While it is interesting to know the extent and success of 
lake drainage in the old world, in our country with millions of 
acres of virgin soil, such expenditures would be unwise. But 
in New England and the Atlantic States there are large tracts 
of bogs and swamps that may be easily and economically 
reclaimed by drainage. The hygienic advantages of stopping 
malarious exhalations from stagnant pools would be clear gain. 
This practice has been common in Europe for a long period. 
When the works now in progress in Hungary are completed, 
that country will have over a million acres of swamp land 
drained and brought under cultivation. Many thousand acres 
have thus been recently improved in Italy and similar works 
are now progressing in France and elsewhere in Europe. Much 
has lately been done in the same direction on our New Jersey 
sea coast, along the shore of Lake Michigan and somewhat in 



34 

the New England States. Several successful experiments in 
swamp-drainage and securing land from overflow have been 
tried in California, thus already improving some 200,000 acres 
of land on our Pacific coast. The diking in and reclaiming the 
salt marshes along the seashore is worthy of increased attention. 
In Marshfield, Massachusetts, over 1400 acres of salt marsh 
have been already greatly improved by shutting off the tides 
of the ocean, at a cost of over $30,000. If the success expected 
attends this experiment, it will deserve to be repeated on a 
broad scale along our seashore. The improvement of moors 
and wet lands by spreading layers of sand is too familiar to 
need description. Tile drainage, though but recently intro- 
duced in this country, is rapidly growing in favor. Though 
more expensive than surface drainage, it produces far better 
results. In this way large tracts of wet land have been 
recently improved, especially in the Western States. The 
statistics from a single State will indicate the general progress 
in this direction. In 1876 less than five million feet of tiles 
were sold in Illinois : in 1877 over fourteen million feet were 
sold. 

The extent of soil depletion in many of the Southern 
States, according to Dr. Tichenor of Alabama, is " painful 
and humiliating. The fields of Middle Georgia were once 
the richest cotton lands of the South. After wearing them 
out, the planters went to Alabama, and there repeated the 
same process of exhaustion. Now the line of greatest pro- 
ductiomhas receded from the seaboard to Texas. Those who 
thus carelessly strip the soil of its wealth are traitors to those 
who come after them. This ignorant plundering of the soil is 
an evil which threatens our national stability. One cause of 
the long continued fertility of China and Japan is the care 
with which every element of the soil is husbanded." 

The practicability and even the possibility of reclaiming the 
sand-barrens of the Atlantic States is so generally doubted, 
that it is needful to show what has been done in this direction 
under conditions the most unfavorable and where it was confi- 
dently predicted nothing could be made to grow. The feasi- 
bility of reclaiming our barren wastes, is proved by many facts 
abroad and at home. Our Atlantic sand plains were once cov- 



35 

ered with forests. The now bare, white sand hills of Province- 
town were described by the Pilgrims, on their landing there, 
as well-wooded. The sand hills on the coast of Prussia were 
formerly wooded, down to the water's edge, and "it was only 
in the last century, says Geo. P. Marsh, " that in consequence 
of the destruction of their forests, they became moving sands. 
King Frederick William I. when in pressing need of money, 
sold the forests of the Freische Nehrung for 200,000 thalers, 
and the trees were all felled. Financially the operation was a 
temporary success, but in the lasting material effects, the State 
received irreparable injury and would now gladly expend mil- 
lions to restore the forests again. The dunes of the Nether- 
lands were clothed with trees until after the Roman invasion. 
The old geographers speak of vast forests extending here to 
the very brink of the sea, and the drifting coast dunes have 
assumed a destructive character in consequence of the improvi- 
dence of man. The history of the dunes of Michigan is the 
same. Forty years ago, when that region was scarcely inhabi- 
ted, they were generally covered with a thick growth of trees, 
and there was little appearance of undermining and wash on 
the land side, or of shifting of the sands, except where the 
trees had been cut or turned up by the roots." 

The sand dunes of Denmark cover over 160,000 acres — 
those of Prussia 110,000 — those of the single province of Gas- 
cony in France over 200,000, and in all Europe the drifting 
sands, according to Pannewitz, cover 7,000,000 acres. Says 
Marsh : "There is no question that most of this waste is capa- 
ble of reclamation by simple tree planting, and no mode of 
physical improvement is better worth the attention of civilized 
governments than this. There are often serious objections to 
extensive forest planting on soils capable of being otherwise 
made productive, but they do not apply to sand wastes which, 
until they are covered by woods, are not only a useless incum- 
brance, but a source of serious danger to all human improve- 
ments in the neighborhood of them." 

This is a subject of practical interest to us because we have 
along the Atlantic coast as at Cape Cod, in Connecticut, at some 
points in New Jersey, and other Atlantic States, on the shores of 
Florida, on the Gulf Coast, on the eastern shore of Lake Mich- 

4 



B6 

igan and elsewhere, long tracts of drifting sand that have done 
serious local damage. To stop this extension, considerable 
expenditures have already been made in several States to cover 
their surface with a vegetable growth. 

But this reclamation of barrens and sand dunes has been 
carried on most extensively and successfully in France. These 
sand hills or dunes as they are called, stretched over a hundred 
miles along the coast of the Bay of Biscay, between the rivers 
Adour and Gironde. Eanging from 180 to 320 feet above 
the level of the sea, they are composed of white silicious 
sand rounded and reduced to minute grains by trituration. 
These grains are still too heavy to be borne aloft by the winds 
and scattered afar like the ashes of volcanoes. On the Atlantic 
shore of France, the prevailing and most violent winds are from 
the west and southwest. Hence at low tide, the sands dried by 
the sun and the wind were driven as along an inclined plane 
up the slopes which descend seaward and thus formed these 
growing dunes, which moving inland created great desolation. 

Nearly a century ago Bremontier published a memoir on the 
reclamation of sand dunes. Under the patronage of the French 
Government, he successfully introduced the planting of the 
maritime pine along the Atlantic coast of Gascony. These 
plantations have been perse veringly continued from that time 
to the present, and now cover over 100,000 acres in that single 
district. Not only has this wide area been reclaimed and made 
productive soil, but a still greater extent of fertile land has 
been rescued from the destruction threatened by the advancing 
sand hills. In speaking of the monument erected to Bremontier 
in this now stately forest, Marsh says : "He deserves to be 
reckoned among the greatest benefactors of the race." 

In planting the dunes, a barrier along the shore was found 
necessary at first to protect the young trees from the rolling 
sands which otherwise would bury them. A double line of 
paling was erected parallel to the shore and a hundred meters 
from high water mark — the second line being a hundred meters 
further inland. This paling is made of planks sharpened at 
the lower end and driven into the sand. Spaces of an inch 
between the planks allow sand enough to pass through to bank 
up equally on both sides and relieve somewhat the force of the 



37 

wind by allowing it to pass through these openings. As the 
paling is covered by the sands the planks are raised one at a 
time. A movable frame with a long lever mounted on run- 
ners, so that it can be slid along the top of the fence, and 
having pinchers or a clamp and chain, is easily carried and 
operated by one man. 

The total cost of planting and protecting the pines has some- 
times been as much as $40 per acre. The timber of this plan- 
tation has long been a source of profit, affording both resin and 
wood. France now draws an annual revenue of 130,000 francs 
from the resinous products of these forests. But in this case 
the greater profit comes from the consequent protection of the 
adjoining country from the encroaching sands, which had for- 
merly sterilized fertile regions and buried thriving villages. 
M. Samanos says that "in all France nearly one million acres 
(400,000 hectares) of desolate land, supposed to be doomed to 
everlasting sterility, have been reclaimed, and these savage des- 
erts are now stocked with maritime pines which will become 
for the country a fruitful source of wealth, and supply some 
day the wants of the whole of France." 

A liberal appropriation is now made annually for the con- 
tinuance of this work. The whole extent of dunes in France 
that remains to be planted is nearly 80,000 hectares, or about 
200,000 acres. A small subsidy is given by the State to those 
who own and plant them, but most of this land belongs to the 
State and is managed entirely by the Forest department. 

These successful experiments, conducted on so broad a scale 
and for so long a period, clearly prove the practicability of 
arresting and utilizing sand drifts by the plantation of trees. 
What has been done abroad on the most unpromising beach 
sands may surely be accomplished under the more favorable 
conditions of our Atlantic barrens, not necessarily by planting 
the same trees or by the same methods, but by those plans 
which a study of the local climate and conditions in each case 
will suggest. The young plants in France have been sheltered 
at the outset by sowing with the pine seeds certain hardy 
weeds, herbs and grasses like the yellow lupin, which gave a 
temporary shade and protection, and by their decay helped 
somewhat to enrich the soil. Some arborists affirm that oats 



38 

or rye, or our blue lupin which thrives in dry soil, will serve 
the same purpose on our barrens. I have not space to detail 
the kindred methods of recuperating sand barrens in other 
countries of Europe. 

I can only name a few illustrations of the extent of this 
work. Hummel attributes the devastation of the Karst, the 
high plateau lying north of Trieste — until recently one of the 
most parched and barren wastes in Europe — to the felling of 
its woods, centuries ago, to build the navies of Venice. The 
Austrian government is now making energetic and thus far 
successful efforts for the reclamation of this desolate waste, 
having planted over half a million of young trees and sown 
great quantities of seed. In the vicinity of Antwerp less than 
fifty years ago was a vast desolate plan. Looking to-day in 
the same direction from the spire of the cathedral, one can see 
nothing but a forest, whose limits seem lost in the horizon. 
Forest plantations have transformed these barren lands into 
fertile fields. On the Adriatic, Baltic, Mediterranean as well 
as the Biscayan coasts the disastrous encroachments of the sea 
have been checked by forest plantations. Extensive plains, 
once barren sands south of Berlin, about Odessa and north of 
the Black Sea and vast steppes in Eussia, are now well wooded. 
R Douglass & Sons, of Waukegan, Illinois, who have been the 
pioneers in promoting economic tree-planting in the West, 
began four years ago the experiment of reclaiming barren sand 
ridges near the shore of Lake Michigan, trying pitch pine, 
white pine, Austrian pine and Scotch pine. Here, as on Cape 
Cod, the Scotch pine proved the best for reclaiming sandy 
barrens. With these facts from abroad and at home it cannot 
be denied that even the poorest soils of the Atlantic States 
may be reclaimed. 

All sand wastes are by no means alike; Trees which will 
grow luxuriantly on one will pine away and die on another. 
The climate, too, varies, as well as the soil. The soil of Cape 
Cod and Nantucket is well fitted for the maritime pine, where 
it has been amply tried. It grows well for a season or two, 
but is sure to winter-kill in a few years. It suffers from the 
severity of the winter in Holland and Germany. Sea spray 
and saline constituents in the soil or air are fatal to some trees 



39 

and favorable to others. A knowledge of the natural growths 
of each vicinity will favor adaptation to local conditions. 

Though dry at the top, sand dunes and most sand plains 
and hillocks are moist a little below the surface, by reason of 
evaporization from the lower strata, retention of rain water 
and capillary attraction. The latter cause depends upon the 
size of the grain of sand. The finer the grain the greater is its 
capacity for receiving moisture and the longer is the moisture 
retained. 

As this scheme of recuperating sand wastes will be regarded 
as chimerical by many who have not investigated the subject, I 
will cite facts found near home. Having made a trip on Cape 
Cod, expressly to inspect their reclaimed lands and confer with 
the intelligent tree planters there, who are the American pioneers 
in this work, I will summarize briefly the information gained 
from them. The amount of land planted with trees in Barnstable 
county is about 10,000 acres. Before the trees were planted 
these well-nigh worthless lands could be purchased at from 25 
to 50 cents per acre. I was interested in the plantations of 
John Doane, of Orleans, the oldest living silviculturist in 
America (now 89 years of age), who has planted 170 acres. 
He has sold planted lands for $14 per acre, not worth over 50 
cents before planting, which he considers a good investment. 
But the best pay has been his enjoyment of this work, so 
manifestly growing with the growth of these trees. The 
forests he has created have long been to him a source of pride 
and satisfaction, greatly improving the surroundings of his 
place, and thus helping to brighten and prolong his years. 
John Kenrick, of South Orleans said: "My experiments in 
tree-planting have been made on over a hundred acres now 
covered with trees from one to thirty-five years old, chiefly 
pitch pine. I am now trying Scotch and Corsican pine and 
European larch. My first aim has been to cover my worn out 
lands with beauty and verdure, and it has proved a successful 
and economic experiment. The seed of the pitch pine is worth 
from one to two dollars a pound, the higher price being in the 
end the cheapest. Fresh seeds carefully gathered are as sure to 
vegetate as corn. I have tried every method of tree-planting, 
transplanting trees from the smallest to those that are two feet 



40 

high. This is a costly plan, but may be adopted when one 
wishes to save time, or desires a few trees as a wind-break or 
otherwise. In transplanting trees immediately from my own 
nursery to the fields, my favorite time is just as the buds begin 
to start in the spring. I have planted seeds both with a plan- 
ter and by hand. On our light sands a man and a boy will 
plant three acres in a day — dropping six seeds in a hill, it will 
take about one-half a pound of seed to the acre. This is my 
favorite method and is more satisfactory in results though 
more costly than that of using the plough and planter. When 
the evergreens are two feet high I would thin them, leaving 
one thrifty plant in each hill. I do not trim till they get large 
and then cut off only the dead branches." 

Tully Crosby, of Brewster, said : "In our small town about 
1500 acres of old waste land have been planted with pitch 
pine. The Norway pine has not proved a success with us. 
Many old fields bought for fifty cents per acre and planted 
with pine twenty-five years ago, are now worth from $10 to 
$20 per acre. The pines grow well for twenty-five or thirty 
years and when cut off a second crop springs up immediately 
and this crop does better than the first. The pitch pine takes 
root and grows on our barren beach sand where no soil is per- 
ceptible. Our people are now planting trees every year. I 
have recently planted twelve acres. Two years ago I cut off a 
lot planted thirty years since and the land is now full of young 
pines scattered by the first growth. A man with a two-horse 
team and planting machine can plant ten acres in a day and 
three pounds of seed will do the whole." 

E. Higgins, of Eastham, said : " Thirty years ago twenty 
acres of condemned tillage land, worth one dollar per acre, was 
planted with pitch pine. The present value of this land is $15 
per acre. In 1870, 225 acres more of the same sort of land 
was thus planted, the present value of which is $8 per acre. 
About 150 acres of sandy land, utterly barren and not worth 
fifty cents to the acre have been planted, the present value of 
which is $7 per acre." John Gr. Thompson, of North Truxo, 
says : " About 650 acres have been planted in this town. The 
price of pitch pine seed for the last few years has been $1.50 
per pound. Thirty years ago land in this town could be 



41 

bought for tree planting at twenty-five cents per acre ; now 
the same kind of barren land sells for $2 per acre for tree- 
planting. I find the expense of planting the pines to be $2.25 
per acre." 

S. P. Phinney, of Barnstable, said : " Large tracts of worn- 
out lands in this country, that were worth comparatively 
nothing, have been planted from the seed of the pitch pine. 
These experiments have proved successful. I know of no way 
in which the light sandy lands in this section can be made so 
valuable as by planting the pitch pine. Our experience proves 
that the cultivation of forest trees is feasible and profitable in 
New England seaport towns. In 1845 I planted in this town 
a ten acre lot with pitch pine seed, much as corn is planted, 
dropping three seeds in a hill and covering them with half an 
inch of soil. To-day many of these trees will gird more than 
a man's body. Hundreds of acres in this section are being 
planted annually." 

We have a great Sahara in Connecticut less than ten miles 
from New Haven, produced by improvidence and neglect. 
The local traditions tell us that the sand-blow covering so 
large an area in the towns of North Haven and Wallingford 
was once finely wooded. Here and there clumps of low pines 
and birches, the lone relics of a former growth, still resist the 
drifting sands. So general is the conviction, that this sand- 
blow is utterly irreclaimable, that it has long since been aban- 
doned to hopeless sterility. I shall be happily disappointed 
if my plan for utilizing it is not regarded by many farmers as 
visionary and impracticable. But the feasibility of reclaiming 
such wastes is proved by many facts. The cost of reclaiming 
the sand barrens on Cape Cod has been small — from three to 
five dollars per acre, but the profit has been satisfactory to the 
planters. The best time for planting the pine seeds is as early 
in the spring as the frost permits. The work is done by hand 
or by a seed-planter, and in rows about as thick as corn is 
ordinarily planted. On the Cape Cod barrens there was no 
vegetation, except a little moss, low poverty grass, so-called, 
and in some cases light beach grass. 

Experiments are now in progress to fix the dunes or sand 
hills which threaten the Suez Canal by planting the maritime 



42 

pine and other trees. I visited the celebrated forest of Fon- 
tainbleau in France, which covers an area of sixty -four square 
miles. The soil of this wide tract is composed entirely of 
sand and apparently as dry as the sand plains of Wallingford, 
Conn. Jules Clare, a student of forest science of world-wide 
fame, says, " the sand here forms ninety-eight per cent, of the 
earth, and it is almost without water ; it would be a drifting 
desert but for the trees growing and artificially propagated 
upon it." 

What has been done with signal success at Fontainbleau 
in Gascony and many other provinces of France, as well as in 
other European countries and on Cape Cod, shows the practi- 
cability of reclaiming the worst deserts that can be found in 
our Atlantic States. Many other facts might be cited were it 
necessary, both from home and foreign fields, to prove the 
feasibility of this plan of reclaiming sterile lands. If one is to 
be commended who makes two blades of grass grow where but 
one grew before, how much more the farmer who makes forests 
thrive where nothing now grows. 

The question is still often asked, will it pay the average 
farmer to plant trees ? Certainly not, if early profit is essen- 
tial. The answer depends on various circumstances, such as 
the size of one's farm, its soil and situation. But on an ordi- 
nary farm of from sixty to one hundred acres and upwards, I 
answer yes. If you are looking ahead and seeking an invest- 
ment for future profit, "trees will make dollars, for they will 
grow in waste places where nothing else can be profitably 
cultivated. A soil too thin and rough for cereals may be 
favorable for trees. Hillsides and plains exhausted and worn 
out by the plow have often been reclaimed by planting forests. 
Eavines too steep for cultivation are the favorite seats of tim- 
ber, and wherever a crevice is found in a rocky ledge, the root 
of a tree will burrow and spread, taking a hold so firm as 
to defy the storm, and acting mechanically disintegrate the 
rock and change its constituent elements into useful products. 
By the road-side, the river-bank, along the brook, and on the 
overhanging cliff, a tree may be always earning wealth for its 
owners. In no way can we ultimately enrich a State more 
than by planting the choicest trees on our exhausted and un- 



43 

productive lands. In such situations, forests will yield a large 
percentage of profit. This is a duty we owe to ourselves and 
to our children. 

George Peabody, who did so much to encourage schools and 
learning, originated the motto, so happily illustrated by his 
own munificent gifts to promote education : " Education — the 
debt of the present to future generations." We owe it to our 
children to leave our lands and towns the better for our tillage, 
and we wrong both ourselves and them if our fields are impov- 
erished by our improvidence. But much as foresight is ad- 
mired when its predictions are realized and its achievements 
made, all history too plainly tells that the mass of men are not 
easily persuaded to provide for exigencies far in the future. 

Though the profit from tree-planting is remote, the pleasure 
is immediate. The sour and selfish soul may say, " Posterity 
has done nothing for me, and I will do nothing for posterity." 
But every effort to start agencies whose benign influence shall 
long endure, gives a glad inspiration and a conscious elevation 
of character. 

15. The improvement of the surroundings of railway stations 
may well enlist the efforts of these associations. The railroad 
depots in America are often made repulsive by neglect or by 
the accumulation of discarded and decaying sleepers and other 
unsightly rubbish, while those in Switzerland, France, Ger- 
many and England are always neatly kept and usually adorned 
with shrubs, flowers, or their beautiful English or German ivy, 
sometimes covering the station-house with its dense garniture 
of foliage. The Pennsylvania Central Kailroad, at the stations 
west of Philadelphia, is following this worthy European exam- 
ple. The beautiful little parks at Pomfret and Stonington 
depots in Connecticut, and those at Kingston, Khode Island, 
and at North Conway and Plymouth, New Hampshire, show 
how simply and inexpensively our railroad stations may, be 
made attractive. Parks and gardens are a proof and product 
of civilization, and are an index of the wealth and culture of 
any community. In the European countries above named, the 
Kailway managers make it a part of the regular duty of the 
station-masters to adorn the surrounding grounds. There is a 
generous rivalry among these agents, who become justly proud 



44 

of their railway gardening and sometimes find their gain 
from the sale of bouquets to passengers. In striking contrast 
with these adornments is the slatternliness disfiguring our de- 
pots, as well described by D. Gr. Mitchell. " There are many 
charming suburban retreats near New York city, to which the 
occupant must wade his way through all manner of filthiness 
and disorderly debris, making his landing as it were in the 
very dung-heap of the place. Is there no remedy for this? 
Must we always confront the town with its worst side fore- 
most? To make a township attractive, the approach to it 
must be attractive. Every village station wants its little out- 
lying Green to give character and dignity to the new approach. 
In nine out of ten of way-side towns, such space could be 
easily secured, easily held in reserve, easily made attractive ; 
and if there was no room for a broad expanse of sward, at 
least there might be planted some attractive copse of evergreens 
or shrubbery, to declare by graceful type the rural pride of the 
place. First impressions count for a great deal — whether in 
our meeting with a woman or with a village. Slipshoddiness 
is bad economy in towns as in people. Every season there is a 
whirl of citizens, tired of city heats and costs, traversing the 
country in half hope of being wooed to some summer home, 
where the trees and the order invite tranquillity and promise 
enjoyment. A captivating air about a village station will 
count for very much in the decision." 

16. Among the minor aims of Eural Improvement Associa- 
tions, are the providing of rustic seats under the shades for the 
comfort of pedestrians, pleasantly suggesting neighborly kind- 
ness and courtesy ; setting up watering troughs for horses at 
convenient points where from adjacent hillsides never failing 
springs invite and facilitate this improvement ; furnishing plans 
for rural architecture, and for gates and fences, or securing 
hedge-rows in room of fences, or, better still, in many villages 
combining to remove all fences and visibly dividing lines, so 
that the private grounds seem to unite with the way-side in one 
large lawn ; the suggestion of the neutral tints for dwellings 
and outhouses in place of the glaring white hitherto so com- 
mon ; arrest of stray cattle, for strolling cattle usually are and 
always ought to be outlawed ; preventing nuisances, one of these 



45 

is the tearing up the turf fronting a dwelling house by incon- 
siderate road-menders. There is ample room for the needful 
wofk of the scraper and the hoe without making unsightly cuts 
and gutters in front of residences. Painting advertisements on 
the rocks by the myriad nostrum makers is a nuisance that 
should be prohibited by law. The same may be said of the 
encroachments made upon the highway every time the stone- 
wall or fence boundary is rebuilt. The whole town should 
show an interest in preventing such curtailment of its road- 
ways. A Kural Improvement Association can develop a pub- 
lic sentiment which will of itself correct these evils without 
occasioning any neighborhood strifes or alienations. In this 
matter the interest of one is the interest of all. The motto of 
the Swiss Confederacy, " One for all and all for one, 1 ' is the 
true motto for the several districts and for all the people of a 
town. Hence the term Rural is preferable to that of Village 
Improvement, for not the village only but all parts of a town 
should be included in the plans and benefits of this movement. 
17. An important work of rural improvement in many 
towns would be the betterment of the surroundings of their 
factories. Too frequently these grounds are disfigured with 
ruftbish and made unsightly by neglect. Keep a man in a 
pig-sty and he would become swinish in his habits, but reverse 
the conditions and you reverse the results. The influence of 
flowers, shrubbery, or neat and cultivated grounds upon 
operatives in refining their taste and promoting their happi- 
ness and content is too often ignored. There is, however, a 
goodly number of our manufacturers who show their interest 
in their hands by making their factory buildings and tenement 
houses inviting, comfortable and healthful, and adorning the 
surrounding grounds. A description of the two model manu- 
facturing villages of America and so far as I can judge, of the 
world, will show the desirableness and results of better pro- 
visions for the taste and comfort of operatives. I do not assume 
that all factories can fully adopt the standard of these establish- 
ments, which are in many particulars exceptional in their oppor- 
tunities. There are serious embarrassments in large and crowded 
manufacturing towns, especially where the factories are con- 
trolled by non-resident owners, more anxious for dividends 



46 

than for the comfort and improvement of their workmen. The 
liberal policy of the Willimantic Linen Company, to give one 
of many similar examples, shows how these difficulties may* be 
surmounted by wise provisions for the improvement and edu- 
cation of the hands. 

One of these "models" is the silk factory of the Cheney 
Brothers in South Manchester, Conn., by far the largest and 
most successful factory of the kind in the world, making over 
25,000 yards of ribbons and broad silks a day. This business 
started here by the Cheney family in 1836, has steadily grown 
in extent and prosperity to the present time. The factory village 
covers about eight hundred acres of land and includes some two 
hundred houses. A fine lawn laid out with winding concrete 
walks and adorned with shrubs and flowers fronts the mills, 
and usually each of the houses. No fence or visibly dividing 
line separates the front yards from the roads. The Cheneys 
have encouraged their hands to build and own their home- 
steads, and to this end furnish the land, and loan money for 
building at a low figure, with a " liquor reservation" in the 
interest of temperance and with the understanding that all 
houses shall be on a plan provided or approved by their archi- 
tect and that all shall be neatly painted some neutral tint. 
Not a house in glaring white here offends the eye. The beau- 
tiful grounds of the Cheney mansions, of the operatives and of 
the factories all present the appearance of an extended park, 
and give a look of refinement, kindliness, and good neighbor- 
hood to the whole village which is like a well-kept garden. 
No private yard is left in an untidy state. No debris or rub- 
bish is seen around or near any dwelling. There is evidently 
a public sentiment in favor of neatness and order that per- 
vades the entire community and allows no dirty nooks to be 
found. Creeping vines cover " the office" and some of the 
factory buildings and dwellings. No block houses are found 
here. The cottages stand apart and vary in style, giving an 
individuality to each place. A capacious aqueduct carries 
water to every house. This village seems like a community 
in the best sense of the term, with common interests, pursuits, 
and sympathies. The providing of a large and commodious 
lecture hall costing $50,000, together with interesting and in- 



47 

structive lectures and entertainments and a free library and 
reading room, solely by the Cheney Brothers, shows their 
intelligent and liberal methods of promoting the well-being 
and content of their employes. The hands highly appreciate 
the liberality of their employers and feel a manifest interest in 
their work and a pride in the place. Hence strikes and aliena- 
tion between capital and labor are here unknown. 

The other model manufacturing village is that of the Fair- 
banks Company at St. Johnsbury, Vermont. There is the 
largest manufactory of scales in the world, employing in the 
factory and branch departments elsewhere, over one thousand 
men, and manufacturing over 60,000 scales annually, the 
sales now amounting to over $2,000,000 a year. It has 
long been a marvel how such a concern could be made a 
permanent success for full fifty years in the northeast corner 
of Yermont, so far from tide- water, with expensive freightage, 
the items of coal and iron alone being yearly about 10,000 
tons, with many other heavy supplies from the sea-board and 
the necessity of transporting thither, the manufactured 
products. Throughout New England of late the tendency of 
manufacturers has been from the interior to the seaside. They 
have often abandoned old sites and water privileges far inland 
and built near the great markets, where they must run by 
steam only. But in St. Johnsbury, notwithstanding these dis- 
advantages, the business has steadily grown and become a suc- 
cess, which, in "view of the difficulties overcome, is unparal- 
leled in this country. 

What is the explanation of this marvelous prosperity? On 
revisiting St. Johnsbury recently, the first impressions made 
seven years ago were confirmed. I inspected the works, talked 
freely with the hands as well as the owners and with the citi- 
zens of St. Johnsbury not connected with the factory. To 
observe the home-life of the operatives, I entered their houses 
and conversed with their families. These inquiries brought 
out facts and inferences suggestive alike to all employers and 
employed. 

This village, where nature has been lavish of her gifts, 
shows the added charms of landscape art. The whole town 
is justly proud of their beautiful soldiers' monument, their 



48 

fine public building, and manifold rural adornments. This 
company maintains the highest reputation for integrity. 
Many names honored abroad are tarnished at home. Only the 
strictest honesty and fair dealing can stand the test of daily 
business intercourse with hundreds of hands for half a century. 
" They do everything on the square," was, in substance, the 
answer of many citizens and workmen to my inquiries on this 
point. The company has fairly earned and gained the confi- 
dence of their men and of this entire community, and a good 
name at home naturally follows them everywhere. The work- 
men say that they are never permitted to do any sham-work, 
even for the most distant market. To quote the pithy phrases 
of the men, " no shoddy here," " no veneering," " no puttying." 

There is a superior class of workmen in this establishment. 
All are males. Their work is proof of skill. Their looks and 
conversation indicate intelligence. They are mostly Ameri- 
cans, and come from the surrounding towns. More than half 
of them are married, and settled here as permanent residents, 
interested in the schools and in all that relates to the prosper- 
ity of the place. Many of them own their houses, with spa- 
cious grounds for yard and garden, and often a barn for the 
poultry and cow. These houses are pleasing in their exterior, 
neatly furnished, and many of them supplied with pianos and 
tapestry or Brussels carpets. How different from the nomadic 
factory population, swarming from Canada and from other 
lands to densely crowded tenement houses, who never bind 
themselves to civilization by a home, much less by a house of 
their own ! The tenement houses, also, are inviting and com- 
fortable, and surrounded with unusually large grounds. The 
town is managed on temperance principles, and drunkenness, 
disorder and strife among the hands are almost unknown. 
Most of them are church-goers, many of them church members. 

I examined the pay-roll and found the wages very liberal. 
The workmen seem well satisfied on that score. Wherever it 
is possible, the work is paid for by the piece. The work itself 
is largely done by machinery and that sui generis, invented 
here and for the special and peculiar results here reached. The 
men are encouraged to expedite their processes by new inven- 
tions and share largely in the benefits of all such improve- 



49 

ments. I conversed with one of the hands who invented a 
curious apparatus by which he marks a hundred register-bars 
with greater accuracy and in but little more time than he could 
formerly do one. He now finds working by the job especially 
profitable. Paying by the piece has worked well here. The 
men say it is fairer to pay for results than by hours. The 
worth of labor depends upon its products. This plan stimu- 
lates industry, promotes skill, and fosters inventiveness. It 
apportions rewards to the quantity and quality of work done. 
But more than all, this plan is recognized by the men as just 
and satisfactory. With the time left practically to their own 
choice, there is no eight-hour movement here. No "Labor 
League" or Union has ever existed — no strike ever been sug- 
gested. This would be a poor place for the Internationals to 
preach the gospel of idleness or agrarianism. Imagine one of 
these delegates just arrived at St. Johnsbury and beginning his 

arguments for a strike with Mr. , whose house I visited. 

I fancy him replying somewhat as he did to my inquiry. 
"Why is it you never have any strikes here?" "Well, we 
have a good set of men to start with — temperate and moral. 
Then we are well paid. Wages have often been advanced. 
The owners take an interest in the men. They are liberal 
and public spirited, and are doing a great deal for the place, 
and we feel an interest in the success of the concern which 
has been the making of St. Johnsbury." 

There has evidently been mutual sympathy and interest 
between employer and employed. The senior Governor Fair- 
banks used to say to the men, "You should always come 
to me as to a father." He maintained relations of kindness 
with them, visiting the sick, helping the needy, counseling 
the erring, encouraging their thrift, enjoining habits of econ- 
omy. He taught them that it was their interest and duty to 
"lay up something every month," and that the best way to 
rise in the social scale was to unite economy with increasing 
wages. He himself both preached and practiced economy. 
He was a conspicuous example at once of strict economy and 
princely liberality. His benefactions were munificent, both 
at home and abroad. The fact that so many of the work- 
men are "fore-handed," besides owning their homesteads, is 



50 

due to his teaching and example. The worth and dignity 
of work he illustrated in theory and practice. The notion 
that labor was menial, or that the tools of trade or farm were 
badges of servility, he despised. His sons worked in the 
shop, and thoroughly learned the trade. The brothers of the 
Governor were in full sympathy with him, and the same 
spirit characterizes the sons and the surviving brother who 
now manage the concern. There is still the fullest and hap- 
piest conciliation between labor and capital. It is not strange 
that the workmen " hold on." Their permanency is a striking 
fact. Many have been here from twenty to over forty years. 

Years ago the men were aided in forming and sustaining a 
Lyceum, and liberal prizes were offered for the best essays read. 
Eecently, Horace Fairbanks has founded a library, and opened 
a large reading-room free to all. The Athenaeum containing 
the library, reading-room, and also a spacious lecture-hall, is an 
elegant structure, ninety- five by forty feet, two stories high. 
The books, now numbering nearly ten thousand, volumes, are 
choice and costly ; two hundred and thirty volumes have been 
drawn in a single day. In the reading-room, besides a good 
supply of American periodicals, daily, weekly and quarterly, I 
noticed on the tables many European journals, including four 
English quarterlies, six London weeklies, and ten monthlies. 
The library and reading-room are open every week-day and 
evening, except Wednesday evening, when all are invited to 
attend the weekly "lecture," which is held at the same hour in 
all the churches. Having visited nearly every town of Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut, and traveled widely in this country, 
I have nowhere found in a village of this size an art gallery so 
costly and so well supplied with painting and statuary, a 
reading-room so inviting, and a library so choice and excellent 
as this. 

Thaddeus Fairbanks, one of the three founders of the scale 
factory, has liberally endowed a large and flourishing academy, 
which promises to become the " Williston Seminary" for north- 
eastern Vermont. 

These various provisions for the improvement, happiness, 
and prosperity of this people, coupled with liberality and fair- 
ness in daily business intercourse, explain the absence of dis- 



51 

content and the uniform sympathy, good feeling and harmony 
which prevail. 

How to harmonize labor and capital is now one of the great 
questions of the age. Their alienation has recently caused idle- 
ness, distress and crime on one side, and lock-outs, derange- 
ment of business and enormous losses on the other. The many 
millions lately lost by mistakes on this question furnish only a 
new version of the old story of antagonisms between those who 
should be partners. I have nowhere seen a better practical 
solution of the Labor Question than in South Manchester and 
St. Johnsbury. 

18. As plans for Kural Improvement Associations are often 
called for, the following, adopted in Clinton, Conn., is given. 

This association, though organized less than two years since, 
has already accomplished important results. A circular ad- 
dressed to the citizens of that town by this association, says: 

" At our last town meeting, a liberal sum was unanimously 
appropriated for improving our road-sides. The cooperation 
of every citizen is needed to carry on this good work. While 
no sudden changes are expected, and while the full results 
desired will require time, still, with the united efforts of our 
people, Clinton can soon be made the most beautiful town on 
the Shore Line, offering with the rare privileges opened in the 
Morgan School, unequaled advantages and attractions to invite' 
wealthy and desirable residents who are seeking a country 
home." i 

By-Laws and Regulations of the Clinton Kural 
Improvement Association. 

1. This Association shall be called " The Rural Improve- 
ment Association of Clinton." 

2. The object of this Association shall be to cultivate public 
spirit, quicken the social and intellectual life of the people, 
promote good fellowship, and secure public health by better 
hygienic conditions in our homes and surroundings, improve 
oar streets, roads, public grounds, side-walks, establish good 
grass borders in the streets and public squares, provide drink- 
ing troughs, break out paths through the snow, light the 






52 

streets, remove nuisances, and in general to build up and 
beautify the whole town, and thus enhance the value of its 
real estate and render Clinton a still more inviting place of 
residence. 

3. The officers of this Association shall consist of a Presi- 
dent, a Vice-President, a Treasurer, a Secretary, and an Execu- 
tive Committee of fifteen, six of whom shall be ladies. 

4. It shall be the duty of the Executive Committee to make 
all contracts, employ all laborers, expend all moneys, and 
superintend all improvements made by the Association. They 
shall hold meetings monthly from April to October in each 
year, and as much oftener as they may deem expedient. 

5. Every person who shall plant three trees by the road-side, 
under the direction of the Executive Committee, or pay three 
dollars in one year or one dollar annually, and obligate him- 
self or herself to pay the same annually for three years, shall 
be a member of this Association. 

6. The payment of ten dollars annually for three years, or 
of twenty-five dollars in one sum, shall constitute one a life 
member of this Association. 

7. Five members of the Executive Committee present at 
any meeting shall constitute a quorum. 

8. No debt shall be contracted by the Executive Committee 
beyond the amount of available means within their control, 
and no member of the Association shall be liable for any debt 
of the Association, beyond the amount of his or her subscrip- 
tion. 

9. The Executive Committee shall call an annual meeting, 
giving due notice of the same, for the election of officers of 
this Association, and at said meeting shall make a detailed 
report of all moneys received and expended during the year, 
the number of trees planted under their direction, and the 
number planted by individuals, length of sidewalks made or 
repaired, and the doings of the Committee in general. 

10. This constitution may be amended at any annual meet- 
ing by a two-thirds vote of the members present and voting. 



